He paused, his hand rubbing the back of his head. “Pain,” he said. “Extreme pain.”
“Is it similar to the headaches you complain about?” Kirkland asked.
Armando shook his head. “No. This time I could see.” He turned to Helen. “When I get my headaches, I become blind. In this instance, I was knocked down by the suddenness of it and then I became angry and got up and just ran downstairs.”
“Angry?” Jed interrupted. He pointed at the screen. “You were down with pain and then you just got up and ran? Not just the clock. I think if we use a site map, we can confirm Eight Ball’s report that Armando was right above Helen and me. Unpause it, Dr. K.”
Dr. Kirkland clicked on the remote. The video showed Armando holding on to his head with both hands for a few seconds. His eyes opened. Even on film, Helen caught the anger in his dark eyes. And then he started running. The video blinked as the next micro eye took over, recording Armando disappearing through the exit door.
Both screen clocks mirrored each other on the screens as they showed the simultaneous actions of what happened next, first from Helen’s location, and then from Armando’s, splitting the screen when they were only divided by the corridor wall. One thing was screamingly obvious. There wasn’t anyone else shown, just Jed, Armando, and Helen.
When the video reached the part when Armando was leaping in the air toward her, Helen tapped Jed’s elbow, remembering something. “I thought I heard something right then,” she said softly, thoughtfully. “Not from Armando. I thought I heard a scream. It sounded strange, though, like an echo.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Did you?” Jed addressed Armando.
“No.”
“What about your headache? Do you have one now?”
“Disappeared. The moment I landed on Hell, in fact.” Armando snapped his fingers. “Like magic.”
Helen sat back against the pillow. “I give up. I have no idea what that was all about.” She waved at the screen. “Nothing was captured on video except Armando charging at me like he knew something bad was going to happen, and now he’s saying he just had a headache and decided to go for a run. Right to where Jed and I were standing, funny, that. Meanwhile Jed didn’t see or hear anything. I didn’t see anything. And the microeyes didn’t pick up anything. So, if it were justmy imagination, why did you decide to run downstairs to where I was?”
Everyone turned their attention on Armando, who shrugged. “I can’t explain the unexplainable. All I know is that I was very angry and I just ran in the direction of—” he paused, slowly finishing his sentence, as if it’d just occurred to him, “—the anger.”
“The anger?” Helen repeated, really puzzled now. “Well, that explains everything clearly.”
Armando shrugged at her sarcasm.
Jed walked to the glass window that looked out into the next room and lifted one of the plastic shutters with his finger, peering through it. “Everything’s all about feelings,” he said softly. “SYMBIOS 2. Synthetic biochemistry. Armando’s headaches. Pain. Elena has sexualsensitivity. Both experienced their problems at the same time. Armando rushed toward what he felt was anger. Elena walked toward what she felt was danger. Both collide. Headache gone. Sense of anger and pain gone.”
Armando nudged Helen. “Sexual sensitivity?” he murmured.
“Hey, you called it the ‘reckoning,’” Helen reminded him dryly. She really had to talk to the man about privacy. Talking about hersexual sensitivityin front of four other males, even though two of them were in some measure her doctors, was a little too much information.
A part of her, however, was busy admiring yet again how Jed McNeil could pull apart a complex situation. Right now, even as her mind was busy trying to put together what he’d broken down, he was already turning toward the screens, snatching the remote from Dr. Kirkland’s hands. He replayed the scene one more time, slowing down the film frame by frame. He paused at the one where Armando was in mid-air.
“There. Helen wasn’t looking at Armando. Her gaze was in this general direction.” He pointed at a spot in front of where he stood in the video, then clicked the remote. “Eight Ball, use the trajectory and pinpoint the exact spot Helen was looking.”
Geometrical lines aligned and separated on the screens as Eight Ball started his program. “Trajectory is ninety-eight percent accurate. The angle of Hell’s eyes falls right about a foot in front of Jed McNeil. The arc of sight goes from there to five feet beyond you to the wall, dude.”
“Something definitely caught your attention, scream or no,” Kirkland said as he studied the different angles the super computer had drawn on the stilled frame.
Jed turned from the screen and looked directly at Armando standing by her. His voice was calm. “Two things. You used a dose of the serum about the same time Helen did. I want to know why.” Then he turned to Helen, his eyes gleaming, “There was another presence on site.”
“Huh? How did you get to that conclusion? The microeyes are showing noth—oh.” Helen blinked. The experience in the stairwell in Frankfurt...
Jed nodded. “It seems that, for some reason, those who have taken SYMBIOS 2 have some kind of sense of another remote viewer.”
“I did think about that incident in similar lines yesterday morning,” Helen admitted, frowning, “that I crashed into the remote viewer. But Jed, it’s impossible to feel another remote viewer’s presence.”
“You were wearing the energy alarm ring,” Jed said. “Where is it?”
“T took it back to the labs. Probably to test what happened at the stairwell.” When she was at the CIA, she’d been told about energy alarms, which agencies used to detect the presence of remote viewers in a small area. She’d never seen one until T had given her a ring to wear when Helen had been about to go for the test set by the agencies. It seemed her chief had been suspicious herself. She rubbed her bare finger thoughtfully. “According to T, the energy alarm shouldn’t have affected me at all. It sets off a warning at the lab and I wouldn’t know till someone contacts me about it.”
“It didn’t happen that way. Something set it off and you knew because you reported that you almost fell down the stairs,” Dr. Kirkland said.
“Well, that still doesn’t explain why Armando feels it.”
